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A DRAMATIC CRITIC
ceeded from a man — combined to over-
power the observer and listener. As was
said of Edmund Kean, " he dominated
stage and audience completely." His train-
ing in the Continental School had been
thorough, and, in temperamental force, I
doubt if he was surpassed by any player
at any period of the world. His acting
was of the Latin order, not of the Teu-
tonic or Anglo-Teutonic; it was, however,
though always vital and strong, never ex-
travagant; in gesture, though exuberant, it
was not excessive; in its general method,
it belonged to what, in choice from a
poverty of terms, must be called the ex-
haustive rather than the suggestive school
of art; there was in it not so high a solution
of pure intellectuality as in Edwin Booth's,
but in its mastery, in the largest way and
to the smallest detail, of the symbols of
histrionic expression, it ranked, I think,
above that of every other player whom
the stage of America has known within
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